Max Beckmann (1884–1950) moved to the United States in the late summer of 1947, and spent the last three years of his life there. Impressively, Beckmann made the utmost use of this radical relocation and brought about significant transformations in his painting--producing, among other works, his triptych masterpiece, “The Argonauts”--while also teaching in St. Louis, Missouri, and at the Brooklyn Museum, where he also mounted a retrospective of prints and drawings. The vastness of the American continent, with its unending landscapes and roads and its vast cities embodying energetic modernist optimism, propelled Beckmann into an extraordinary fervor of productivity. This volume looks at these decisive final years, which produced so many key works for the Expressionist master.

Published by Hatje Cantz.

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) moved to the United States in the late summer of 1947, and would spend the last three years of his life there. Impressively, Beckmann was able to make the utmost use of this radical (and late) relocation and was able to bring about significant transformations in his painting—producing among other works his triptych masterpiece “The Argonauts”—while also teaching at the art schools of St Louis, Missouri, and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, where he also found time to mount a retrospective of prints and drawings. The vastness of the American continent, with its unending landscapes and roads, and its vast cities embodying an energetic modernist optimism all combined to propel Beckmann--who had never before experienced geographic space on such an imposing scale—into an extraordinary fervor of productivity. Today, Beckmann’s last years seem all the more impressive when seen in relation to the concurrent emergence of abstract painting in New York and San Francisco (Philip Guston and Nathan Oliveira being among Beckmann’s most vocal advocates at the time). This Art to Hear companion to Beckmann & America looks at these decisive final years through a guided audio tour of key works.

Published by Hatje Cantz.Text by Christiane Zeiller, Gerd Presler.

Famed for his self portraits, which rival Rembrandt and Picasso for intensity of conception and scrutiny, Max Beckmann (1884-1950) towers over German painting of the first half of the twentieth century, providing German modernism with one of its most personal visions and also inspiring a subsequent generation of American painters (Philip Guston, Nathan Oliveira). Now, Hatje Cantz presents this luxurious catalogue raisonné of Beckmann's 54 sketchbooks--the first time they have been published in their entirety. Beckmann used these sketchbooks throughout his active career, which spans the period between 1899 and his death in 1950. Their more than 1,300 pages (plus nearly 100 single sheets that have now been assigned to their original sketchbooks) are all reproduced here and annotated with texts elucidating themes and composition methods. This catalogue raisonné provides revelatory information and insight into Beckmann's process as a painter.

The landscape paintings of Max Beckmann (1884-1950) are increasingly understood as fundamental to his achievement, equivalent in stature to his portraits but operating as the ground for a very different side of Beckmann's sensibility. His depictions of urban landscapes, lakeside scenes and country lanes are without the implication of allegory found in his portraiture; while they do often serve as records of places visited, they also frequently cite works from art history, and occasionally insert the artist into their narratives via personal effects positioned in the foreground, subtly orienting the scene around a human presence. Some of Beckmann's most haunting paintings fall within this genre, such as his “Moon Landscape” of 1925, in which elongated tubular rolls of cloud overhang the city nocturne, embellishing its mood with abstract unease. With more than 100 color plates, this volume shows Beckmann to have been among modernism's foremost exponents of landscape painting.

Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers.Essays by Cornelia Homburg, Tilman Osterwold and Reinhard Spieler.

Art serves understanding, not entertainment, reads one of Max Beckmann's dictums. Beckmann's oeuvre, widely acknowledged to be some of the most significant German art of the twentieth century, contains a wealth of existential and contemporary historical convictions and questions. This representative selection of some 60 figurative paintings done between 1917 and the artist's death in 1950 unfolds the entire panorama of his career, from violent works reflecting the shock of war to pieces from his later years in New York, from the Cubism and Expressionism of his youth to the Symbolism of his later age. The Dream of Life sheds new light on the development of Beckmann's techniques, ideas and central themes: cabaret, music, the world of the theater, dreams and reality, sensual settings and the role of the female muse, as well as his unusual use of romantic visual motifs in landscapes and urban contexts. The authors focus on conceptual aspects of Beckmann's work which have heretofore been neglected.

Max Beckmann was among the greatest painters of the 20th century, yet no retrospective of his work has been mounted in the art capitals of New York, London, and Paris in over 30 years. Perhaps the lapse of attention has to do with the importance of abstraction in 20th-century art, and Beckmann's work is always figurative, simultaneously muscular and enigmatic and has enormous and unsettling power. Beckmann began his career as a naturalist and Symbolist in the period before World War I. After the war he developed a unique pictorial style that mixed expressionist color and gesture, mythological and mystical allegory, and the harsh new objectivity of his portrayal of modern life throughout the Nazi reign of terror. A prolific artist in painting, drawing, and printmaking--as well as a powerful sculptor--Beckmann created mysterious images and dense tableaux of unparalleled intensity and complexity during an odyssey that took him from his native Germany to Paris, Amsterdam, St. Louis, and New York.

A new examination of Beckmann's role and reputation during the first half of the 20th century has been eagerly awaited. Making use of new scholarship and previously unavailable research materials, this book sheds light on Beckmann's work and his influence on and interactions with the artists of his day. Essays include discussions of Beckmann's Frankfurt cityscapes, his pictures from Italy, his triptychs, his group portraits, and his relationship with cultural politics in the 1920s and 1930s; texts and interviews by artists Leon Golub and Ellsworth Kelly; curator Robert Storr on "The Beckmann Effect"; and artist William Kentridge on Beckmann's Death. This sumptuous volume is published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition mounted jointly by the Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is the first comprehensive exhibition of Beckmann's work to be seen in the United States since 1984, and the first in New York since 1964.